


Till Kingdom Come

by theirblinggirl



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur is clueless but Merlin may be even more clueless for once, Arthur-centric, Destiny/fate/they belong together forever reference, Gen, M/M, kind of bittersweet, lots of thoughts and internal monologues., this could be read either as friendship or romance or both probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:02:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9398735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theirblinggirl/pseuds/theirblinggirl
Summary: Arthur is a regular real-estate agent with the most simple, everyday life. He is also friends with a mysterious ghost in a regular, everyday haunted house. AKA another sort-of-reincarnation Merthur story.(edit: somebody said I should put this in the summary, so:Based on this prompt from tumblr:"ghost in the house: GET OUT. I WILL TAKE YOU-real estate agent: chill, its me.ghost: oh hey. have you sold it yet.real estate agent: obviously NOT, idiot.")





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marmaladica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marmaladica/gifts).



> "For you, I'd wait 'til kingdom come,  
> Until my days, my days are done.  
> Say you'll come and set me free,  
> Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me."
> 
> (Coldplay - Till Kingdom Come)
> 
> For Marmaladica - most likely not what you wanted, but I still hope you'll like it a little^^

The summer heat disappeared almost instantly as soon as Arthur’s foot crossed the threshold of the little, old house at the end of the short driveway. He was used to these unusual changes in temperature by now, and he was even grateful for it in the middle of the crazy Cardiff summer. Honestly, this part of the country was not supposed to be this bloody hot, not even in August.  
A few seconds later, predictably, he heard floorboards creak somewhere above head on the second floor. They started slow and distant, and drifted all over the place – above the hall he just entered, then on top of the wide, mostly empty living room to his right, then back above the hallway, approaching the top of the stairs… The ancient and definitely not up-to-safety-regulations chandelier hanging over the stairs trembled a little, and Arthur cracked a nervous smile. He liked predictable, and the pattern of this haunting was usually that. He knew what was coming next – a little shake of the window panels, the flip of the kitchen curtain, more floorboards creaking, always in places you can’t directly see, and finally, finally, the ambiguous shadow flashing in the old, spotted mirror across the hall. He was starting to get a bit annoyed at this point, because he had been having a hard day and would have liked to just collapse in that smelly armchair on the second floor that somebody, at some point, dragged into the house and up the creaky stairs for some incomprehensible reason.

But the haunting was a ritual, Arthur came to understand, and it would not allow itself to be broken under any circumstances. He knew he had had his own quirks, and it seemed that the house – or rather, its occupant - did too.

The voice, however, was a new addition to the play. The voice and the terrifying chill that ran down his spine, as words were spoken inside his head, with no speaker to be seen. “Get out” the voice whispered rather menacingly. “Get our or I shall take your soul and drag it to the depths with me, while your body withers away and…”

“Hey, mate, could you cut it out? It’s just me!” Arthur snapped, looking around for the… the ghost, for a lack of a better word. The creaking and the rattling and the whispering immediately stopped, and, to Arthur’s dismay, the temperature rose back to normal as well. Which is to say, maddeningly hot.

“Oh” the ghost exclaimed, and it sounded a little disappointed, too. Arthur briefly wondered if he’d ever been able to tell apart emotions in its voice before. It was one of those things that you could never be entirely sure of, because you never really thought of it until it wasn’t there, and Arthur distinctly remembered thinking that its voice used to be… otherworldly, somehow. Now it almost sounded as a person through glass, of maybe water. Still hard to make out, but definitely human.

“Have you sold it, finally?” it asked in that same tone, as its murky frame slowly appeared on top of the stairs. Arthur let out a chuckle, and walked upstairs to his armchair. The performance was officially over.  

“Of course not, idiot” he huffed, but a smile was still tugging at the corner of his lips as he finally plopped down into the dusty monstrosity of a furniture, and looked out the dirt-smeared windows at the tiny, overgrown garden. “I would have to bring potential buyers here first, and since you’re here and you’re impossible, nobody would stay long enough for me to actually show them around” he continued, rubbing his temple. His heart wasn’t really into the scolding, though.

“Well, I live here, and I don’t want to live with other people. I was here first” the ghost huffed and Arthur could’ve sworn he heard something like a pout in its voice. Was this his imagination playing tricks on him, or has something changed?

“I came to moan about my terrible day” he started, eyes tentatively searching out for the smudged figure of his most improbable friend, the ghost. (He did not know if it thought of him as such too, but Arthur did not like to complain to strangers, thus, it had to be a friend.) When it wasn’t moving, Arthur had a hard time pinpointing its location as the edges of its entity were blurred and tended to melt into the shadows, as if it was part of the house. It probably was, Arthur thought. Still, he liked to know that he tried. “But seems like something has changed here, so, you first”

“I don’t know what you mean” it answered, shifting closer to the armchair. It was easier to see when it moved in front of the window, the afternoon sunshine not quite managing to penetrate its shadows. Arthur liked having it where he could see it, and it probably knew.

“You sound different” Arthur mused, looking up at the bright blue of its eyes. Everything else may have been smeared and barely-there, so much that he sometimes managed to convince himself that he was imagining the whole thing, but the eyes, they bore through his soul from the very first day. Arthur found that for some reason, he instantly relaxed when he was looking into them, as disorienting as that was, without an accompanying face, and all.

“Do I?” it mused, giddy, and moved even closer, lowering itself to the floor without a sound. Arthur imagined that it would be sitting by his feet, if it was human. “Maybe your hearing got better. I always sound like this. Terrifying. Mysterious. _Creepy…_ ” The last word was spoken with some hesitation, as if it was testing out a new piece of vocabulary, and Arthur laughed, for the first time that day.

“Nah, you’re just trying real hard. Nothing creepy about you” he shook his head, and sighed. “Either way. As I was saying, my day…”

~~*~~

For so long he’s never questioned the ghost living in the small, old house hiding behind the cracked concrete driveway that sneaked behind the worn wooden gate, surrounded by all kinds of viciously growing plants. No-one would ever accuse Arthur of being superstitious, but he also came to like the most obvious and direct answers to any given question, and once he saw for himself the reason why rookie agents regularly got this particular estate assigned to them – as an overused, borderline ritualistic  initiation prank – he just went with it. Everybody saw the ghost, therefore it existed, case closed.

This new development, however, just wouldn’t leave him alone. He tried not to bother about it, but his thoughts kept going back and back again to the strangely familiar voice, something he was sure he’s never heard before, yet felt like he knew. So he looked it up.

He started with famous ghost stories (most of them hoaxes for sure), then wandered onto questionable online forums about supernatural occurrences. There seemed to be hundreds of aliens living in England, and twice as many ghosts. He’s found some posts about hauntings that rang familiar – squeaking stairwells, flickering lights and the sort – but nobody on the internet was able to tell him who his mysterious ghost was. The house records weren’t any help either. His agency got it from another agency, one that has since gone bankrupt, and obviously, there were no mentions of hauntings on official records.

Then he looked into any strange happenings in the Cardiff area, and sure enough, soon he compiled a list of miraculous medical recoveries, plants that were growing or blooming in places and at times they had no business growing or blooming. Smoky figures dancing just below the horizon without any fires in the vicinity, birds or bees flying in patterns that appeared to be spelling out something… the sort of things that most people (including Arthur) would simply write off as the play of light or hallucinations from sleep deprivation. He himself has had his fair share of such hallucinations, ever since he was a kid. He’s mostly forgotten about them, but reading similar accounts brought the memories back, especially since they seemed to converge around his old neighbourhood, where he grew up. But he could not find any common point, any indication or even theory as to what they might have been, or when they started. Wales was a strange, magical place, and the Welsh people seemed to just accept that for a fact (including, again, Arthur), and move on with their lives.

More importantly, after a week of spending most of his free time on this haphazard research, the dreams started again. He wrote them off as side effects of all the crazy stories he’s been reading, but giving it a reason did not make them any easier to endure. Just like before, Arthur went a few days without any actual sleep, sustaining himself on horrible office coffee and pretending to be too busy with work to talk to people, in order to avoid having to answer questions about why he looked like a pile of shit (because he was feeling like a pile of shit, that’s why). He stopped reading the ghost stories, but that didn’t help. He took a few days off after he accidentally fell asleep with his eyes open in the elevator and woke up seconds later, screaming, almost giving an old secretary a heart attack.

On his second day off, he took a cab (he didn’t trust himself to drive like this), and went to the house.  
The trees were swaying and whispering on the driveway as he walked in, but Arthur paid them no attention. Smoke was slowly drifting from the slightly lopsided chimney, even though Arthur knew that there was no way any sort of heating would be on, not in this late summer heat, not in this house that only he had the keys to. He paid it no attention either. Once, when he was much younger and learning how to ride a bike, he almost hit a unicorn that jumped in front of him out of nowhere. He was mortified and refused to get back on the bike for months, even though his parents (and his doctor) told him several times that there were, in fact, no unicorns either in the neighbourhood, or in the world, for that matter. Arthur knew they were right, but he also knew that he would not be responsible for accidentally killing a magical horse, so he decided to play it safe.

Since then, he’s learned not to pay attention to strange things he saw. The sole vision he could believe was the ghost, and only because he knew others have seen it, or at least, felt its presence, too. Maybe, he thought, that was the reason why he liked coming to its place. He grew up with fits of vivid dreams, which was perfectly normal (according to his doctor), but towards the end of bad periods, his brain became unable to tell the difference between asleep and awake, and he saw them in broad daylight too (which was not that normal, but could be solved with careful medication, a healthy lifestyle and possibly growing up, according to his doctor).

The past few years were mostly normal, and Arthur had almost forgotten what it felt like, waking up in cold sweat and out of breath, as if he was being chased (more often than not, he was chased in his dreams, by stinking men in clinking armour or by unfamiliar creatures). In retrospect, he should’ve known that the stories could bring it back, but he was too sleep-deprived to care. All he had on his mind was that he needed to see it again, the apparition that was real, to ground him back to reality, because his logical self knew that he wasn’t losing his mind, that he wasn’t crazy, but the illogical part, the emotional part needed reassurance nonetheless.

“You look like a pile of shit” the ghost told him, once Arthur collapsed into the armchair. It was stating a simple fact, but its voice was teasing and playful, like it expected him to argue. Arthur didn’t dignify that with a response.

“You look like you haven’t slept in days” the ghost tried again, sounding more concerned, and Arthur raised a brow at that.

“Nothing escapes you, huh?” he retorted, not really feeling playful, but still giving it a try. “I have a lot on my mind lately, that’s all.”

The ghost drifted closer, until it was hovering (standing?) by his side, and Arthur felt a small, warm touch on his shoulder. When he looked, he saw faint outlines of a hand with slender fingers hesitantly squeezing a tense muscle. The hand looked young, or rather, not old, wrinkly and spotted like he would have expected, and it was barely there, but it was definitely visible, more visible than anything about the ghost before, save for the cobalt eyes, but Arthur was too tried to think about that. “Like what?” he heard it whisper as he started to drift off.

“Dreams, mostly. And ghosts…” Arthur stopped himself before he could tell what he was looking into, but he felt like it understood nonetheless. It moved even closer, and squeezed his shoulder again. Arthur was going to say something else, but instead, he just fell asleep.

_The dragon returned again. Like before, Arthur was terrified of this majestic, ancient monster, and he tried his best to hide it by raising his shaking sword as high as it would go, standing with feet planted wide, ready to attack, even as all he could think about was to run, run, run. Pretending to stand his ground while wanting to run away felt like a most familiar practice to Arthur, and every time he thought about it, he squared his shoulders and took a step forward. He would never run._

_This time, however, the dragon was not chasing him. It smelled of ashes and smoke but it wasn’t breathing fire, wasn’t soaring above and swooping down to pick his men up, one by one. It was standing in front of Arthur, gigantic eyes levelled to his, and it was talking. Talking to him and to someone else, someone whose presence he could feel but he couldn’t turn to look at them because the dragon’s stare held him frozen in place. And the terror of it was too heavy, it clouded his mind and blurred his vision too, he heard its rumbling voice but could not make out the words, and there was this beeping sound too and it just got louder and louder until all Arthur could hear was the beep-beep-beep-_

Arthur was startled awake by the beeping of a garbage truck backing up on the street. For a long second, one of those seconds that seemed to stretch into infinity, he could not remember where he was. The vision of dusty floorboards and moth-eaten curtains bled into the view of great, rolling hills so green they hurt the eye and a deep lake that was a mirror that was a lake… No. The floorboards and curtains, those were reality. Arthur was in the ghost-house, and apparently, he fell asleep in the armchair. He knew that he dreamt again, but there was no cold sweat and trembling stomach and bile creeping up his throat. In fact, he felt strangely rested. He could feel that the ghost was still by his side, coming to sort of sit on the armrest at some point. The hand was still resting on Arthur’s shoulder, and he was suddenly hyper-aware of its touch.

“How long was I out?” he asked, trying to hide his embarrassment, and stood up to shake the hand off without looking as if it was intentional.

“Almost a day, I’d say, but I’m not the best with time. You were really, reaaally exhausted.” The fact that he’d slept so long combined with the calm, playful way it said those last words  made Arthur swung around to gape at it in disbelief – and he saw a smile.

Where before there was nothing – not truly nothing, but something that could only be described as the absence of a face where there clearly should’ve been a face – he saw a smile now. He saw a playful, warm glint in the familiar blue eyes, and he although he saw no real chin or lips or teeth, somehow there it still was. A smile. The ghost was smiling, and, Arthur realized with a jolt, not only was it smiling but everything about it looked more solid than before. It was a smudged patch of air before, truly visible only because Arthur’s mind supplied the rest of it by the position of its eyes and the glimmering air that took the shape of a body. Now, it was a kind of smudgy shadow, but undeniably a shadow (a reflection?) of a human body. He looked down at its hands that were folded in its lap now, comfortable and curious rather than nervous, to check if he’s seen it right before, but they were distorted as the rest of it. A wild idea started to form in Arthur’s head, but he put it aside for the moment.

“An entire day? Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked, going for the safest question instead.

“You needed to sleep. I could tell. And that you needed to talk to somebody too. I’m really good at telling these sorts of things, you know. Did you talk to them?”

The smile was still there, and it started to distress Arthur more and more as his head was clearing up. There was truth to the first part, though, and he didn’t feel it in himself to argue just for the sake of it. He’s been through a week with one or two hours of sleep a day, so this was a small miracle, and he wasn’t going to be ungrateful for it. He was still on sick leave, anyways. The second part was too unfathomable at the moment so he chose to ignore it.

“Well, now I’m hungry so I’m going out to eat something” he simply said instead, and with an awkward nod, he turned again to leave. The ghost caught up with him downstairs, as he was opening the door.

“Will you be back?” it asked in a small voice that reminded Arthur of somebody very young.

“Of course, moron” he said. How could he not? There were so many questions he wanted answers for. He just didn’t know how to ask them.

As he hailed another cab and drove away, it occurred to Arthur that maybe he should’ve said thank you to the ghost for making him sleep. He did not know how it had anything to do with that, but for some reason he felt entirely sure that it did.

~~**~~

The next day, Arthur went back to work, mindlessly alternating between sitting at his desk and pretending to do paperwork and putting on his brightest smile for clients as he showed them around in various houses, reciting the pamphlet catchphrases for each of them. (“You won’t find another place with this much natural light in the living room!” “The structure is still in almost perfect shape! You barely need to do a little restoration before it’s ready to move in!” “The previous owners were almost crying when they had to leave to move to Iceland, they swore they’d never find another home like this!”)

He had to make up for the days he missed, but all he had on his mind was the ghost in the house. And sometimes, when he closed his eyes, the dragon, but he’s learned not to pay attention to the curiosity about his dreams as that only fuelled them. He wanted to know what it was saying to him, but he also knew that knowing would make it seem that much more real, and he couldn’t allow it to seem real. His dreams were not going to overcome him and ruin his life. Not again.

He gave up on the internet research, and started poking around at his agency instead, but all he learned was that the last actual resident, a retired, elderly man, died at least twenty years ago, and his grandchildren were trying unsuccessfully to sell it ever since. Nobody seemed to know, or care, if it was haunted from the start, and somehow it felt utterly impossible that the ghost was an elderly man. Arthur has seen its hand. Or so he thought.

He still dreamt, but they were back to normal dreams now, most of the details drifting away as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning. He still smelled smoke and horses, even though he’s never been on an actual horse before. He still saw the azure sky mirrored in a lake, and eyes that were even bluer than that. Eyes that were bluer than blue – eyes that he knew from somewhere. Eyes that he knew where exactly he remembered from. After a week or so, he returned to the house again.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Arthur” the ghost chided, as soon as he stepped inside. Immediately after he set foot in the house. No playing around, no haunting, no trying to scare him off. Arthur was caught so off-guard he almost forgot that what he came for.

It used to be that he went to the house to be alone, to talk to the mostly unresponsive ghost (like talking to himself, but a little less insane), to moan about his annoying boss or the loud family next door or rant about politics or, very rarely, to muse about life in general. He used to come for himself. But after that time he noticed that something was off, that something has changed, he became a little curious, and then he became very curious and he knew he was balancing on the edge of “careful medication” again but he didn’t care. He had the weirdest feeling, or feelings, and he needed to know…

“Why don’t I know your name?” This was not something he intended to ask, but hearing his own name confused everything momentarily.

“Don’t you?” it sounded downright offended now, and it sank back when Arthur stepped closer. He was really losing it now.

“Okay, listen, we’re gonna sit down and then we’re gonna talk, you and me” he shook his head, and strode up the stairs, mustering all his dignity. He was two hundred per cent sure the ghost never told him a name, and yet, Arthur could not shake the feeling that he should, in fact, know it.

“What if I don’t want to talk to you?”

Arthur stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down at it and made a face. “Then you should’ve stayed out of my dreams” he scoffed, not stopping to acknowledge how that could have sounded. Surely ghosts did not understand accidental equivocal flirting.

  
Once he was upstairs, the ghost appeared in front of the window, and because Arthur knew that it was perfectly capable of walking like a human being instead of teleporting around inside the house, he rolled his eyes at this obvious showing off. Then, he took a deep breath, and opened his mouth to speak, only to realize that he had no idea where to even start.

“I don’t know your name because you never told me” he said, for the lack of anything better to say, and while again, logically he knew that this was the truth, it still tasted like lies. “But I’m almost certain that you are a boy. No, a young man. What I mean is, around my age…” he trailed off, again, throwing his arms in the air in frustration. He used to be able to express himself perfectly well, and yet.

The ghost smirked at his spectacular loss for words, and moved closer, but this time, he made the effort to look like he was walking. Soon they were standing eye-to-eye (Arthur was slightly shorter and that bothered him a great deal for some reason, too), but neither one of them made the move to sit.  
“Whatever, man.” Arthur shrugged, holding his blue gaze. “What I mean is, ghost or not you should have the basic sense of politeness and introduce yourself.”

“I’m not even surprised that you forgot” he answered playfully, and opened his mouth (it still wasn’t visible, but Arthur’s mind somehow formed the picture on its own, of a wide mouth with corners curling upwards in a friendly sort of way, and taking a breath to continue speaking), but then, suddenly, he stopped, and took a ghost-step back.

“I… I can’t remember” he whispered, casting his eyes down. Arthur was sure that if he could see his shoulders, they would have dropped in defeat. “I can’t remember anything, _Arthur…_ ”

And as he took another step back, a terrible sense of guilt overcame Arthur so strongly he had to close his eyes and take a deep, shaky breath. All this time he’s been coming over here, talking and talking and talking about himself and never once asking the ghost anything. His name, his thoughts, his story, anything he might have wanted to share… He just sort of accepted him as part of this old and forgotten and slowly rotting house that was once a home to many happy families and was now the home of a lonely, invisible ghost-boy. Whose only friend (did he consider Arthur a friend now? Did Arthur _really_ consider him a friend?) was him, a real-estate agent that was as terrible at his job as he was terrible at being a friend apparently, and was also rather unremarkable at everything else in life, slowly disappointing his colleagues and his family and then himself. But this, at least, he knew how to fix.

“Hey” Arthur said softly, but there was no answer. The ghost looked completely lost now; slowly looking back and forth between his two feet and the lines of his body were starting to blend back into the shadows of the room. “We’ll figure it out! I’ll help” he said again, a little louder, and he came closer to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder – where he felt his shoulder would be.

And then it happened again and this time Arthur was paying enough attention to catch it. (He did not know that he wasn’t paying attention before, and now he was left to wonder what else has passed him while he was too busy trying to sort out his own life to pay attention to random miracles, or how often did he write them off as his own imagination when in fact they were someone else’s.) And soon as he touched him, the ghost seemed to tremble and _grow._ Not in size, but in everything else. He became more visible, more solid-looking, and somehow his outlines started to fill with colour and substance – it was as if there was this space before where Arthur only knew that something – somebody - should have been and now that space was actually filling up with this something – somebody. Much like the hand that touched Arthur’s shoulder before, except now it was all of him, and soon, way too soon to leave enough time for his brain to comprehend, there he was, this young man with dark, curling hair and impossibly high cheekbones and a long neck and lanky limbs and the bluer than blue (sadder than sadness) eyes, standing in front of him, still looking down at his feet.

Arthur was so startled he almost took a step back, but at the same time everything in his body screamed at him not to let go, never to take his palm away.

“Look at me” he said, swallowing the slight discomfort at the closeness. He never fussed much about physical closeness or touching others, but this felt different – this felt intimate, no, familiar enough that Arthur’s voice almost trembled. “What do you remember then?”

“I remember…? The dragon, from the… your dream?” he answered tentatively, as if every word was a question instead, but Arthur could see the confused clouds clearing up in his eyes. He was suddenly nine again, going to this smelly hospital with his mother to visit his grandfather. At that age he did not understand much about the whole deal – he did not understand why grandfather called him his dad’s name and why he kept telling the nurse that he did not know mum, and then, five minutes later, talking to her in his usual voice again. He heard the word – dementia – as the adults whispered amongst them, but that did not mean anything to him. But what he clearly remembered, and what came back to him now, was how grandfather’s eyes clouded over before he started yelling, and then cleared up again later. He saw the same thing happen to the boy-ghost, and he wondered how old he must’ve really been, despite looking Arthur’s age.

“The dragon, right. Let’s… not focus on the dragon now” Arthur said, pulling him to the armchair and gently pushing him down. This time, he sat on the armrest while the ghost leaned back to look up at the ceiling. Arthur still didn’t let go of his shoulder, and his thumb was rubbing tiny, soothing circles into his see-through shoulder blade. “Tell me something from before the dragon. Like… since when have you lived here? In this house?”

Arthur decided it was probably best to take one small step at a time, and leave the questions he really was eager to ask for later.

“Since… long? I don’t… I remember the trees outside. They were a lot smaller. But I like big trees, so I asked them to grow. They are bigger now.”

“Because you asked them. Right, okay. Let’s… just tell me things that you remember, okay?” Arthur sighed again, mostly giving up. He was used to the ghost being cryptic and not making sense. In fact, that seemed to be his default setting, but now he was starting to realize that these phases were simply due to his loss of sense of self, rather than his otherworldly nature. Or maybe the two things were one and the same. Maybe as long as you remembered yourself after you died, you remained as a ghost, and only disappeared completely after you forgot who you were. Only, in this case, it appeared to work the other way around. At first he was no more than menacing sounds all across the house, and slowly, without Arthur taking notice until the very end, it became he, the incorporeal smudge in the corner of the room became this almost-boy, this not-quite-a-person.

Then, just before he completely gave up for today and started to withdraw his hand, the mostly-ghost spoke again.

“I remember too much, Arthur” he said, in a melancholic and ancient voice that did not match his young features at all. “I remember the knights in their polished armour, atop their whinnying horses, charging into battle. I remember thick white walls growing over stinking, narrow alleys with cobblestones, and great forests that stretched to the end of the world. Here, too, was a forest… there were fairies living in the forest, and monsters that were just as magnificent as they were deadly. I remember dark caves that were wet, so wet and cold and beautiful and I remember a lake that more than a lake! Everything used to be so beautiful, Arthur, and so much more…” he said, and Arthur knew he was right because he could see it too. He’s been seeing it since he was a child.

“But then the knights went and the pain came, and the blood and the fire and more pain… Everybody was hurting, Arthur” he went on, and Arthur only nodded because he remembered seeing that too. “The lake used to wash it away, the pain and the fire and the blood, but then the lake went away too… and the castles and the stones and the forest went away, and so I went away. And there were other forests, and a sea that was stones and other beautiful monsters, and the mountains reached higher than the stars, and I remember flying… I flew everywhere, and I think I was looking for something, but I forgot what I was looking for and then, then I forgot other things too. I forgot where the forest used to be, and I forgot where the castle used to be and I forgot how to call for the dragon. I forgot my name, and I forgot my face, and then I found this house and, so, I live here now.”

His words sounded final, but Arthur forgot to respond for a moment because he was wrecking his memories of his dreams, for the mountains higher than the stars and the other forests and the sea of stones, but he found none.

“I don’t remember dreaming anything like that” he admitted, looking up into the ghost’s blue eyes. “At first, I thought that you were just saying things that I used to dream about, because… Well, I have no damn idea, but you said dragon and I used to dream with this bloody dragon all the time, but… everything you said after the lake, I never dreamt that” he shook his head slowly. It was starting to become too much, too fast, too soon. Him, dreaming of things from the memories of this not-quite-ghost was one thing he was going to have to accept. Forgetting the end of the story was more difficult.

“That’s alright” said the ghost, smiling sadly. “I’m all better now. You can go home, if you want. I think I won’t disappear until you come back…” he continued, answering thoughts that Arthur did not even know he had until now.

“How… Do you read minds or…?”

“No” smiled the ghost, and this time, his smile was warm and reassuring and way too familiar. “I just know you very well, Arthur.”

~~**~~

So home Arthur went, and, against his better judgement, and he turned on the TV and fell asleep right in front of it because what else was he supposed to do? He knew the dreams would come, loud commercials or not, but this time, he tried his best to be ready.

He wasn’t ready.

What he saw was all the visions he’s had in his life, jammed into a few hours of sleep. Or maybe he’s always dreamt this much, just never remembered. What he saw was memories. History. Legends. And magic, magic all over the land, all over the world. With his dream-eyes, he saw an intangible net of energy, magic, stretching across the fields and the hills and forests and cobblestone streets, unbreakable walls and high, high rooms, tying together monsters and knights, dragons and princesses, farmers and druids, kings and queens, the living and the dead. Arthur and Merlin.

He saw what he kept forgetting before, the eyes, the clear eyes that were cobalt blue but somehow also shining gold, and everywhere, everywhere he went. And as Arthur was running for his life; as he was charging into battle, and he was hiding from the witch and riding to meet her; as he was trembling in terror but also in awe in front of the dragon, he turned his head each time. The boy-ghost-boy was there, always there, just by his side, never leaving.

For the first time, Arthur could hear the dragon. “Nine dentists out of ten recommend this!” it said, sounding suspiciously like a television that someone, somewhere, _somewhen_ left on while they fell asleep in front of it. Then, shaking its great head in slight confusion, it continued. “…the same coin. You are but two sides of the same coin.”

“I don’t understand” Arthur replied, still utterly terrified.

“Oh, but you do” it huffed, as if it was disappointed in Arthur somehow, and he felt an urge to win its approval, which was, at the same time, clearly impossible. There was a tale somewhere in his head, a tale of a boy and his dragon – a dragon and his boy. Arthur realized that he wasn’t that boy.

He had to go to work the next day, and then go to two meetings with clients and beer with friends. He sat through work, thinking about what the dragon said. He worked through the meetings, thinking about invisible ribbons curling around his hands and feet and neck and chest, filling his head with someone else’s memories and pulling him towards… towards his own life, perhaps. He thought he saw them, when he wasn’t directly looking, circling the clients, the passers-by, the cab driver. Some people had thick ropes of it wrapping them up in a cocoon, and others barely had a few strands hanging from their fingertips. Arthur silently named them – it – for what he knew it was. Magic. And after that, he could see it no longer.  
He cancelled the beer with friends (it was possible this wasn’t the first beer he cancelled in the past few weeks), and went back to the house.

~~**~~

The ghost was waiting for him by the door, again, and Arthur missed the ritual of the haunting that he’s gotten so used to. He now realized it gave him time to unwind, to prepare himself mentally for the impossible, to blur the lines his medications drew in his consciousness all those years ago. The boundaries between dream and reality. Only now he started to wonder if there really was any difference between those two.

As it were, without the familiar sounds and flickers of light to ease Arthur into the mood, his nerves stood naked and exposed to the (un)reality, the presence of the ghost, and – Arthur had to stop calling him “the ghost”.

“Arthur” he greeted, cheerful, and for a painful second, he looked like the most regular person.

“Merlin” Arthur nodded, smiling as well. His smile was different. His smile was watchful of Merlin’s reaction. The boy’s eyes widened, and Arthur was half-expecting to be enveloped in a ridiculous, bone-crushing hug for some reason, but that never happened. Instead, Merlin lowered his head.

“You remembered” he whispered, clearly surprised. Of course he did, Arthur wanted to retort. How could he forget, he wanted to ask. And he only had the faintest, most improbable idea where any of that came from. (It was another memory, either Merlin’s or Arthur’s, or maybe, possibly, probably, both.)

“When did you die, Merlin?” he asked instead, stepping deeper inside, but not finding it in him to walk upstairs. That room, that chair, was for unwinding after a hard day, and there was no sense of unwinding in this conversation. This conversation was about secrets and unfathomable truths and conclusions that you came to by suddenly feeling right about them.

Merlin looked back up, biting his lip. He looked twenty. He also looked twenty-thousand. He was happy – not simply happy, but vibrant with joy, his eyes sparking and reaching into Arthur’s very soul, inviting him to smile, laugh, dance, and be merry. Be alive. _Please be alive.  
_ He also looked as broken and sorrowful as someone whose experiences of terror and loss ran deeper than you could ever comprehend. _Please be alive._

“I don’t think it was me who died, Arthur” he shook his head, voice filled with blame, which, in Arthur’s opinion, was a tad bit uncalled for.  
Then he remembered the lake and bit back a retort.

“What are you, then? If not dead?” There was a pause before he added, more quiet and almost reluctant, “Are you just one of my dreams? Are you… not real?”

“I’m magic” Merlin confessed, and his breath came ragged as if he was crying and Arthur felt a pain so sharp in his gut he thought he was dying for a second. He _was_ dying for a second.

“I don’t understand” he admitted, although that felt a little untrue. He understood how Merlin could be magic – how Merlin could be so old but not dead, because he was magic and magic sustained him after nothing else of him remained, long dead or forgotten or dead because it was forgotten. He just didn’t understand what that knowledge meant.

“I had magic, so long ago, there was magic in me so much it kept me from dying, so much it kept me going all across the world. Magic and also determination, I think. But it didn’t keep my memories, and slowly I was worn and washed away until nothing, not even my name, but only the magic remained. All that is left of me now, I think, is magic” he said, and as always, Arthur was shocked to hear him speak so much all at once. He thought he wanted him to speak more all the time. (He thought he remembered him speak more.) Speaking suited Merlin well.

“But that’s not really true anymore, is it?” Arthur asked softly. Merlin looked down on himself – he raised his hands up in front of his face, examining each of his long, slender fingers, touching them to his face, his hair, the back of his neck, across his ribs as if he were checking for his heart. In the dimness, without direct light to pierce through his previously smudged form, he looked completely, perfectly human. “You have - your name now.” He was going to say something else but changed his mind in the last moment, and he knew Merlin noticed.

“Thank you for remembering it, Arthur” he smirked playfully, and Arthur realized how he said Arthur’s name every time he had the chance. They both knew it was because that was the only name Merlin could remember for a long time. Arthur wasn’t ready to begin to understand what that meant.

“I don’t know if I can… understand what all of this actually means for me. Not yet” he admitted, but he couldn’t help the way the corners of his mouth were curling upwards. Invisible avalanches were rolling off his chest. Merlin was becoming real. Merlin was real.  

“We will figure it out later. As we go… I have a feeling we’d be good at that” Merlin laughed. Not only his mouth, but his eyes were laughing too. His ears – he had remarkable ears - , his shoulders, everything about him was beaming with silent, joyful laughter, yet tears were rolling down his cheek.

“Why are you crying?”

Merlin reached his palm out, and Arthur met it with his, threading their fingers together with a gentleness that surprised him. Then, after a moment of silence, he reached out to cup his cheek, wiping the slow tears away with his thumb. A tiny ray of sun peeked through the dirty window panel by the door, but Arthur didn’t notice before, because it was stopped by the back of Merlin’s neck, and only appeared after he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was warm and solid and alive and real. Arthur kept on smiling - he would probably never stop smiling now - but his voice came trembling as he answered his own question.

“Because it was me you were looking for.”

“You are completely full of yourself, aren’t you?” Merlin laughed, short and teasing, but his eyes were serious and honest as they caught Arthur’s gaze. “But in the end… you were the one that found me instead. You weren’t even looking and still, you found me.”

“You know” Arthur mused, pulling Merlin to stand a little closer, revelling in the way the sunshine couldn’t shine through him any longer, “maybe I was”.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic for the 2016 Merthur Gift Exchange that did not turn out how I wanted it to turn out at all, but I still hope it's okay :)
> 
> The story was written based on this prompt from tumblr: http://lunaisfree.tumblr.com/post/152705515305/thecw4kids-ghost-in-the-house-get-out-i-will  
> Also, here is the house: https://li.zoocdn.com/33e95ab5f205489715834f0fb6d9f33a57a6e55f_645_430.jpg


End file.
